Identifier: historicalaccoun01etti (find matches)
Title: An historical account of the old State house of Pennsylvania now known as the Hall of independence
Year: 1876 (1870s)
Authors: Etting, Frank M. (Frank Marx)
Subjects: Independence Hall (Philadelphia, Pa.)
Publisher: Boston, J. R. Osgood and company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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replace this, and to seek others. Upon an officialvisit to Harrisburg, at the close of the late civil war, he discovered inactual use in the Senate Chamber at the Capitol, two more of theoriginal chairs, which he was able to identify, though they had beenslightly changed by the elongation of their legs for the convenience ofthe Sergeants-at-arms: whereupon he applied to the then Governor(Curtin) to order them returned to Philadelphia, to the originalLegislative chamber, from which they had been taken. This waseventually done. The Governor went further. He sent back to the Hall the identicalchair originally made for the Speaker of the AsscMubly of Pennsylva-nia, the chair already referred to as used by Hancock,while Presidentof Congress, and by Washington, while President of the Convention 1 Possibly tins was done dmiiii; the impiovements of 1828. 2 It was presented by Mrs. William Meredith, the elder, a niece of GouverneurMorris who secured it at the time the furniture was scattered.
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I THE RESTORATION. 167 wliich framed the Constitution of the United States ; with it camealso the Speakers table, which had also been in use during- the sessionof Congress in 1776, and upon which the Declaration of Independencemust itself have been signed by those who subscribed on August 2,1776. On visiting the Hall of the American Philosophical Society, thewriter also discovered a chair, the exact counterpart of the Congres-sional chair of 1776, and already referred to as authenticated by tradi-tional statement and family possession. Upon the examination of theminutes of the Society, it was found that this second chair had beenalso authenticated and presented to the Society some forty years beforeby Francis Hopkinson, Esquire, the Clerk of United States DistrictCourt, in whose possession it had been since the dispersement of thefurniture of Independence Chamber. Thus was presented conclusiveproof of the identity of both. The very existence of these four chairsafforded the wherewitha

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